Meaningless or deceptive text can be added after "http://" and before an "@" symbol.

The domain name can be expressed as an IP address, in dotted-decimal, dword, octal or hexadecimal format.

Characters in the URL can be expressed as hexadecimal (base 16) numbers

Two more ways come to mind that are most useful if you are building your own website:

Use indices or hashes for object references. For example, www.mywebsite.com/myapp?objectref=1.

Use a hash function (say MD5 or SHA-1) to hash the URL and use the result as a key to the real URL. For example,
www.mywebsite.com/this/is/a/private/path might become www.mywebsite.com/f061a171dfc30635462850684f98b886.
This is similar to what URL shortening services such as TinyUrl do.